The report cited a Shanda Games spokesman confirming the investment without disclosing further details such as the amount of investment, the size of Tencent’s stake, or the timeline of the transaction.

DEALSTREETASIA has reached out to Shanda Games for confirmation of this development and will update this story as soon as an update is received.

Shanda Games was spun off by parent Shanda Interactive Entertainment and listed on the Nasdaq stock market in 2009. Its $1.04-billion IPO was one of the largest ever US IPOs of a Chinese private sector company. It delisted in 2015 following a $1.9-billion deal with Capitalhold.

On its website, Shanda Games said it offers more than 70 online games – including The World of Legend, Dragon Ball Online, Dungeons & Dragons, and Ragnarok Online – to millions of registered users.

Tencent, on the other hand, owns a number of online multiplayer games, including Call of Duty Online, QQ Fantasy, Crossfire, Dungeon Fighter Online, and War of Zombie.

Tencent has been stepping up efforts to expand its pipeline of content for the global games market. In August last year, it acquired a 9 per cent stake in Cambridge-based games developer Frontier Development Plc for $22.2 million, making it the developer’s second largest shareholder.

In recent years, Riot Games, Supercell, Miniclip, Epic Games, Netmarble and Paradox Interactive have bagged significant investment from Tencent, which has become the world’s biggest games publisher in terms of revenue.